40 years old celebrating colored logo. Anniversary year of 40 th vector template numbers. Happy birthday greetings celebrates. Stained-glass digits of jubilee ages. Mosaic pattern figures in various colors.
Forty years. Wow! This month Refuge House celebrates its 40th anniversary of service provision in our community. During that time, we’ve grown tremendously: a bigger Leon emergency shelter, an additional shelter in Taylor county, transitional housing services, a courthouse office, a stand-alone rape crisis service center, collaborations with DCF and local sheriff’s offices, counseling, community education, multiple 24 hour hotlines…. This list goes on!
Our growth wasn’t arbitrary. At the heart of all we’ve done and continue to do are the survivors in our community seeking safety, hope, and change. In forty years, we have worked alongside tens of thousands of women, children and men seeking refuge. We are honored to be even small parts of their lives, and we hope each participant feels that. It is their strength, their vulnerability, their power that is most important to our mission.
While we look back at the many trials and triumphs of the past forty years, it’s hard to not look forward as well. Team Refuge House brims with energy for both holistic intervention services and effective prevention programs. We will move into the next forty years with passion and dedication for the victims still in conflict, for the survivors in silence, for those we’ve lost from violence, and for those at risk. The national and local rates of domestic and sexual violence are still far too high. There is still much work to do.
We thank you, our friends in the community, for supporting our agency over the last four decades of operation. We would not be here without your donations, volunteer time, event attendance and well wishes. There are still numerous ways for you to get involved with the efforts to end violence and see healthy relationships thrive as the norm. Call or email us today to offer whatever unique gifts you can; it is all appreciated!
So cheers to us, to you, to the survivors and to Saving Lives, Building Hope, and Ending Violence! Here’s to a great forty years and an even better future!
